The Minnesota Wild were eliminated from the Stanley Cup Play-offs on May 1, and a giant sinkhole opened up on West Seventh Street — a block away from the Xcel Energy Center — exactly one week later.

Coincidence?

Yes. Still, some businessowners are calling the timing a small blessing. No one wants a gaping hole running some 35 feet into the ground to open in front of their business. But if it had to happen, better that it take place in the post-season lull after professional hockey has let out and before the height of the summer concert season.

At the Downtowner Woodfire Grill, there’s been “no impact on our business,” said general manager Patrick Johnson, shortly after Tuesday’s lunch rush. “It’s been busy.”

That sentiment was shared by a driver for Domino’s pizza, a server at Tom Reid’s Hockey City Pub and other frontline staff at West Seventh Street businesses. Private contractors under the supervision of St. Paul Public Works will spend up to two months repairing the man-sized sink hole that opened on the evening of May 8, forcing ongoing partial road closures between Chestnut and Walnut streets.

Officials with the Xcel Energy Center said their day-to-day operations and events are not impacted by the sinkhole. They reminded fans attending Wednesday’s Minnesota Frost game that they need to plan ahead due to road closures connected with the sinkhole.

General traffic is being detoured between Kellogg Boulevard and Grand Avenue, though West Seventh in that stretch remains open for local business access, with one lane open in each direction. Sidewalks are unaffected.

“We don’t want through-traffic there,” said Lisa Hiebert, spokesperson for St. Paul Public Works, on Tuesday. “This is why we’re saying local business access only.”

Otherwise, there have been no direct water or sewer impacts reported by businesses, according to the city.

City crews are examining whether water may have loosened and weakened the earth in the affected area.

“It’s a good argument for why we need to reconstruct roads,” Hiebert said. “What we can say is a lot of time, sinkholes are caused by voids caused by water, but it’s still a little early to say what it was and what it wasn’t. Sources of water can come from many places.”

Filling the hole will be no simple patch job. Contractors will have to dig more than 30 feet through sandstone and limestone, assess damages and then rebuild the sanitary sewer tunnel.

The work, which began Monday, will involve installing new utility connections for surrounding businesses, building out a new shaft to the surface and then replacing the road surface, without damaging a 20-inch water main. To ensure worker safety, crews will install temporary supports for the depth of the project.

“Nobody ever wants things like this to happen, but this is a good example of how quickly the city and the agencies came together to limit impacts to businesses in the surrounding area,” Hiebert said. “The businesses, everybody was really great to work with.”

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UnitedHealth CEO Andrew Witty is stepping down for personal reasons and the nation’s largest health insurer suspended its full-year financial outlook due to higher-than-expected medical costs.

Andrew Witty

Chairman Stephen Hemsley will become CEO, effective immediately, the Eden Prairie-based company said.

Hemsley was UnitedHealth Group CEO from 2006 to 2017. He will remain chairman of the company’s board. Witty will serve as a senior adviser to Hemsley.

It has been a punishing period for UnitedHealth, starting in December when executive Brian Thompson was targeted outside of a New York City hotel and killed.

While unrelated to the financial operations of the $340 billion healthcare giant, its shares have tumbled severely since the attack.

“I’m deeply disappointed in and apologize for the performance setbacks we have encountered from both external and internal challenges,” Hemsley said during an early Tuesday conference call. “Many of the issues standing in the way of achieving our goals as well as our opportunities are largely within our control. I am optimistic about our future as these issues are within our capacity to resolve. We will approach them with humility, rigor and urgency.”

The 60 year-old Witty joined the company in 2018 after serving about nine years as CEO of the British drugmaker GlaxoSmithKline. He was named UnitedHealth’s CEO in February 2021, replacing Dave Wichmann.

UnitedHealth became one of the nation’s largest companies under Witty’s leadership. Total revenue topped $400 billion last year, a 55% increase from the $257 billion UnitedHealth brought in the year before Witty became CEO.

Shares of UnitedHealth rocketed higher under Witty, too, up 60.5% since he took the company’s top job.

Yet there have been several setbacks for UnitedHealth over the past five months as it wrestles with the national attention on Luigi Mangione, who was indicted last month on a federal murder charge in the killing of Thompson.

The case has captured the American imagination, setting off a cascade of resentment and online vitriol toward U.S. health insurers while rattling corporate executives concerned about security.

UnitedHealth cut its 2025 forecast last month following its first quarterly earnings miss in more than a decade. On Tuesday the company withdrew that financial forecast entirely, saying that medical costs from new Medicare Advantage members were higher than expected.

Shares of UnitedHealth, which have plummeted 38% since the deadly Dec. 4 ambush of Thompson in midtown Manhattan, fell more than 16% Tuesday to levels last seen almost five years ago.

More than 50 million people have health insurance under UnitedHealth Group Inc. It also has a large pharmacy benefit manager that runs prescription drug coverage and a growing Optum segment that delivers care and provides technical support.

UnitedHealthcare is the nation’s largest provider of Medicare Advantage plans, with more than 8 million customers. Those are privately run versions of the federal government coverage program mostly for people ages 65 and older.

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New Jersey’s attorney general said Tuesday chemical manufacturer 3M agreed to pay up to $450 million to resolve lawsuits over natural resource contamination stemming from PFAS — commonly referred to as “forever chemicals.”

The settlement is subject to court approval and a public comment period, Attorney General Matt Platkin’s office said. Maplewood-based 3M is expected to pay $285 million this year, with additional amounts payable over the next 25 years. The total amount could reach $450 million, Platkin’s office said.

“Corporate polluters must be held accountable when they contaminate our state’s water supply,” Platkin said in a statement.

PFAS, or perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances, are a group of chemicals that have been around for decades and have now spread into the nation’s air, water and soil.

3M said in 2022 it would end all PFAS manufacturing by the end of this year. In a statement, the company said it’s on track to do so.

“This agreement is another important step toward reducing risk and uncertainty on these legacy issues, allowing 3M to focus on its strategic priorities,” 3M said.

PFAS were manufactured by companies such as 3M, Chemours and others because they were incredibly useful. They helped eggs slide across non-stick frying pans, ensured that firefighting foam suffocates flames and helped clothes withstand rain and keep people dry.

The chemicals resist breaking down, though, meaning they linger in the environment.

Environmental activists say PFAS makers knew about the health harms of PFAS long before they were made public. The same attributes that make the chemicals so valuable – resistance to breakdown – make them hazardous to people.

PFAS accumulate in the body, which is why the Environmental Protection Agency set their limits for drinking water at 4 parts per trillion for two common types — PFOA and PFOS — that are phased out of manufacturing but still are present in the environment.

The New Jersey settlement stems from 2019 lawsuits at the nearly 1,500-acre Chambers Works site in Pennsville and Carneys Point and another location in Parlin. The settlement also resolves all other statewide claims in litigation over PFAS in firefighting material used in the state.

The lawsuits alleged the companies involved, including 3M, knew about risks from forever chemicals produced at the facilities but continued to sell them.

The attorney general said that by agreeing to settle 3M would not go to trial next week in the Chambers Works case.

New Jersey’s Department of Environmental Protection will use a portion of the settlement funds to “protect public health, safety and the environment from impacts caused by PFAS,” according to a joint statement from the attorney general and DEP Commissioner Shawn LaTourette.

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NEW YORK — Pete Rose and Shoeless Joe Jackson were reinstated by baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred on Tuesday, making both eligible for the sport’s Hall of Fame after their careers were tarnished by sports gambling scandals.

Rose’s permanent ban was lifted eight months after his death and came a day before the Cincinnati Reds will honor baseball’s career hits leader with Pete Rose Night.

Manfred announced Tuesday that he was changing the league’s policy on permanent ineligibility, saying bans would expire at death. MLB said 17 individuals had their status changed by the decision, including all eight banned members of the 1919 Chicago Black Sox, former Philadelphia Phillies president Williams D. Cox and former New York Giants outfielder Benny Kauff.

Under the Hall of Fame’s current rules, the earliest Rose or Jackson could be inducted would be in 2028.

Rose agreed to a permanent ban on Aug. 23, 1989, following an investigation commissioned by Major League Baseball concluded Rose repeatedly bet on the Reds as a player and manager of the team from 1985-87, a violation of a long-standing MLB rule.

“The National Baseball Hall of Fame has always maintained that anyone removed from Baseball’s permanently ineligible list will become eligible for Hall of Fame consideration,” Hall of Fame chairman of the board Jane Forbes Clark said in a statement. “Major League Baseball’s decision to remove deceased individuals from the permanently ineligible list will allow for the Hall of Fame candidacy of such individuals to now be considered.

“The Historical Overview Committee will develop the ballot of eight names for the Classic Baseball Era Committee — which evaluates candidates who made their greatest impact on the game prior to 1980 — to vote on when it meets next in December 2027.”

Rose first applied for reinstatement in September 1997, but Commissioner Bud Selig never ruled on the request. Manfred in 2015 rejected a petition for reinstatement, saying “Rose has not presented credible evidence of a reconfigured life.”

Rose died Sept. 30 at age 83, and a new petition was filed Jan. 8 by Jeffrey Lenkov, a lawyer who represented Rose. Lenkov and Rose’s daughter Fawn had met with Manfred on Dec. 17.

A 17-time All-Star during a playing career from 1963-86, Rose holds record for hits (4,256), games (3,562), at-bats (14,053), plate appearances (15,890) and singles (3,215). He was the 1963 NL Rookie of the Year, 1973 MVP and 1975 World Series MVP. A three-time NL batting champion, he broke the prior hits record of 4,191 set by Ty Cobb from 1905-28.

“Pete is one of the greatest players in baseball history, and Reds Country will continue to celebrate him as we always have,” Reds owner Bob Castellini said. “We are especially happy for the Rose family to receive this news and what this decision could mean for them and all of Pete’s fans.”

Jackson was a .356 career hitter who was among the eight Black Sox banned for throwing the 1919 World Series. He died in 1951 but remains one of baseball’s most recognizable names in part for his depiction by Ray Liotta in the 1989 movie Field of Dreams.

Under a rule adopted by the Hall’s board of directors in 1991, anyone on the permanently ineligible list can’t be considered for election to the Hall. Jackson was twice considered on ballots by the Baseball Writers’ Association of America, but received just 0.9% in 1936 and 1% of a nominating vote in 1940.

Rose’s reinstatement occurred too late for him to be considered for the BBWAA ballot. If not on the permanently banned list, Rose would have been eligible on the ballots each from 1992 through 2006. He was written in on 41 votes in 1992 and on 243 of 7,232 ballots (3.4%) over the 15 years, votes that were not counted.

Without the ban, both players are eligible for the Hall’s Classic Baseball Era, which next meets to consider players in December 2027 and considers those whose greatest contributions to the sport were before 1980.

 

FILE – This undated file photo shows baseball player player Shoeless Joe Jackson. (AP Photo/File)